Is it More Time Consuming to Pack RPCs?

A common myth about reusable plastic containers is that they are more time consuming than corrugated boxes due to the additional assembly time.

This couldn’t be further from the truth! In fact, RPCs are easy to assemble and disassemble and require no staples, wires or sharp edges. Once a retailer or grower receives the RPC, manual assembly is simple with no box cutters or tools required to open and prepare for packing or display. In addition, RPCs feature an ergonomic design that reduces strains and pulls from heavy lifting.

For a large-scale grower operation, RPC erecting can be automated with an RPC Erector. Manufactured by Fibre King, this machine is low cost, robust and compact to automate the assembly of IFCO RPCs. It can assemble up to 20 RPCs per minute and requires only one employee to operate the machine. There are various options on infeed and outfeed conveyers for the machine in order to suit the needs of your particular operation. In addition, most existing box erectors can be easily and inexpensively retrofitted to accommodate RPCs.

How Does The RPC Erector Work?

A stack of 30 collapsed RPCs are manually loaded onto the infeed conveyor.

From there the machine assembles and ejects each RPC for use.

Once they are assembled, your RPCs can either:

Move onto an Outfeed Conveyor leading directly to packing lines

Move to a Stacker & Palletizer Unit that stacks erect RPCs to a pre-determined height prior to palletizing them onto plastic pallets.

An alarm will sound and a light will flash orange to alert staff to reload the RPC Erector Infeed Conveyor to ensure continuous activity.